Things and we love them for it. Thanks for watching. Im al sharpton. Have a great weekend. Hardball starts right now. Bad call, this is hardball. Good evening, this is Chris Matthews in washington. Let me start tonight with this plague of violence in the nfl. And the deepening scandal involving its commissioner, tmz reporting late today that one of the leagues biggest star, Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson has been indicted for child abuse. It comes on the heels of this bombshell report on nfl commissioner Roger Goodell. According to espn, Baltimore Ravens running back ray rice told goodell he had hit janay rice then his fiancee in the face inside a revell casino
hotel elevator in atlantic city, new jersey and knocked her unconscious. That happened back in june before a month before goodell suspended him for two games. Nbc news latest report something consistent with espns. Goodell is under tremendous pressure right now about why he waited until this week when tmz sports published that video to suspend him indefinitely. According to goodell its because the information they had at the time of the suspension was too vague. Heres goodell. When we make a decision we want to have all the information thats available and obviously that was when we met with ray rice and his representatives, it was ambiguous about what actually happened. In a letter obtained by espn goodell states that rices version of events in that meeting were, quote, starkly different, closed quote than what we saw in that tape. Well, the question is does it matter . Can he survive the heat now. Sports reporter with the Associated Press reporting all this stuff and buzz is a Pulitzer Prize winning author out on the story in oregon tonight. Buzz, i always want to hear what you have to say about the context. How do you look at this whole thing. I want your take on his performance, why he believed the rises and their representatives, whoever those pr people were, lawyers were and why he didnt believe what he saw on the tape of the guy the guy dragging his fiancee out of elevator and the Police Report saying she was knocked out by the punch . Well, look, there are all sorts of signs and before june, you know, there was the Police Report saying that she had been knocked unconscious and that ray had done it. In february, it was reported that this tape did exist. That was reported by sports illustrated. Its getting worse and worse and worse, the stink, because whatever goodell says or not didnt say, he should have
gotten a copy of that tape. When they vet draft picks, they will know the last time you had lunch and what you ate for dinner so in this case, the excuse, we couldnt get it, we couldnt find it, they didnt give it to us doesnt wash. It doesnt wash and, you know, goodells in trouble. I think the owners like him and i think at the end of the day hes going to claim it was all semantic differences. What does it mean to strike unconscious . But its stinking worse and worse. But the word ambiguous used with Norah Odonnell on cbs, ambiguous, what do you think he was saying . What were people hearing when they heard ambiguous, meaning there was different testimony, the old grouchomarx. Believe me or your lying eyes. There was a Police Report, a document, a primary source of information, a Police Report and yet he was believing weeks later some nice when they come in
cleaned up and telling nice stories and he believed it then . Yeah, because, look, its the nfl. Theyre soing a product. Ray rice is a bigtime player. Didnt have a good year last year but hes pivotal to the ravens, you know, he could have suspended him indefinitely on the basis of what they knew was that she was struck unconscious. My guess is the difference will be strike unconscious, hell say, i was never told they actually took a roundhouse. Maybe he pushed her, maybe she fell to the elevator. Its going to be all the semantic bs. The fact of the matter is the nfl has objectified women for how many years. Why do you have women cheerleaders . Why do these teams have cheerleaders . Its about sex, objectification of women and theyre also selling violence. They have a real opportunity to do something far beyond the Sexual Assault which is horrific. Get the objectification out of the game but i dont think theyll do anything and, look, the biggest number you need to
know is 13. That was the rating, the share last night for the ravens and the steelers. People are football obsessed so the nfl is saying, were bulletproof. Nothing in the end is going to change the popularity of the game which mines benjamins and millions and billions in peoples pockets. Rob, back to you with the same point. I want you as a reporter on the game you watch people being interviewed from the ravens game last night all cheering for him, all these women, women, one after another woman saying let him stay. Rice is great. Forget about all this. This is nothing. Forgive and forget. Move on. This obsession with the next game, i guess it is. What is it . Chris, you know, the most interesting quote that i heard last night and i was there and i was in the locker room was from tory smith, wide receiver on the ravens saying ray rice is still a gray guy, still a great person and if you take those two minutes of his life away he is a
mod the citizen. Thats what his teammates believe. Most of the teammates i spoke to rave about rice as a human being, as an individual. They are still friendly with him. They feel bad for him and for the situation. Nobody, no one katulis condones anything that he did, but theyre trying to say that this was an isolated incident and they love this guy and hes been a great, great teammate, a great member of the community and just a very well respected person in the entire city of baltimore so i did see a lot of female fans and a lot of male fans wearing a ray rice jersey last night and that says a lot about the way that he captured that city and had a big fan base. Yeah, well, the San Diego Tribune and usa today track nfl arrests and they report that there have been at least 28 nfl players arrested this year since the super bowl and some of the charges include suspicion of felony domestic violence. Driving under the influence, dui, drug possession, battery
and disorderly conduct. Assaulting a police officer. Aggravated assault. Buzz, besides the treatment of women, is there a sort of bad boy aspect to football especially where its part of the image of the sport that some of the players are just almost to the point of being dangerous guys . Look, i think theyre trying to lessen it. On the fringes but its always been part of football. Violence, hitting people, machismo. Its harkened back to bobly bane. Paul horning gambled. These are she men. Goodell wont suspend 28 players because it will dilute the product. Hes not going to do it. If what espn and nbc is reporting is true, even if it isnt true, the fact that he only gave him two games, t twogame suspension when he knew that she had been knocked out by force from ray rice is despicable. It is despicable because ray rice might be a great guy or
not, what does he do . He walks away. He walks away. Trust me, in an nfl championship in the super bowl, he would walk away if some guy got in his face but he should have walked away here and said he he didnt just knock her out. He threw a roundhouse left, its probably the most brutal act many of us have seen and this two minutes, lets let all murders out. Lets let all killers out. It only takes two minutes to wreck a life or to kill somebody. Its a ridiculous thing and a distressing thing for pro Football Players and teammates to say. Its absurd. Rob, what do you think is the timing on the report by the muir commission by nfl . Are they going to get to the bottom of this in a reasonable amount of time . How many are there at nfl headquarters you have to interview to get this thing done quickly. Chris, and thats the big thing, since my report came out that someone at the nfl did indeed receive that video, a female voice in the voice mail i heard from my Law Enforcement official source 12second voice
mail from a female saying she received it and agreed with the Law Enforcement official this was terrible, the nfl has launched this investigation. Well, as you said, there are a lot of employees in that building. A lot of people walking through. The big question is who else saw that video . Did this video get passed to that woman. Did she give it to the intended recipient. Did it ever get to Roger Goodells hands or did it stop at that female voice mail . Is she the last person who saw . And the investigation by the nfl should get to the bottom of that and this could take some time. It really could take a lot of time. Why . Why not call everybody in the room who is a female and ask who got the video . How long could it take . A simple question, yes or no, did you ever get a tape that showed him beating up his girlfriend. You didnt, lets go to the next person. Go right through the list and get your answer. Why does it take so long . I know why it takes so long. Its Public Relations and if you
want to kill an issue have a commission, have a meeting and you know what you do, you let it sit there till the whole thing gets coal and two or three months from now when the thing is cold on a friday night you release a report that accepts responsibility. In some vague were all guilty bs thing. Dont you think theyll do, rob . Youre reporting this. And they have done that. Theyve said that they made an error in giving him just two games and theyve changed their rules and theyve changed their policy. Now itll be six game so theyve made every step along the way. Going back and said we handled this wrong. We did the wrong thing in this from the beginning but now, you know, everybody there is a Different Development every day. We all want to know did they see that video and thats the key thing. Did they see that video or are they just reacting are they just reacting to the public reaction of the video . Buzz, every week they get ready for the next game. They get ready. They get it done. They dont say give me three
months to get ready for the next game. They can ask a simple buy nary question to everybody in their headquarters and be done in an hour or two. I think its a game. Your thoughts, last word . I think you made a good point. You know, commission it to death. Report it to death robert mueller, itll be 185page report. I will fly you out here to gods country because i guarantee what mueller will say, hell rake the nfl over the koals, the tape existed somewhere but i have concluded that Roger Goodell did not see it. Case closed. I guarantee you that will be the result. Okay. Thank you very much. Buzz, youre the best. Buzz bissinger and rob maadi and congratulations on that great reporting and you deserve awards for that. The great documentary filmmaker ken burns here with an early look at his new sevenpart series on the roosevelts. Its all about teddy, franklin and eleanor and premieres this sunday. Plus, Hillary Clinton heads to iowa. Her first time back since her bitter defeat in the iowa caucuses. Will she practicing to the right or play to iowas antiwar base . And the battle against isis. Well be joined by seth molten and antiwar veteran who did four tours of duty in iraq and just this weekend, this week actually defeated sitting u. S. Congressman john tierney in the democratic primary up there in massachusetts. Finally let me finish with the very democratic notion that dynasties make no sense whatever. This is hardball. The place for politics. Musical chairs. Fun, right . Welllllllll, not when your travel rewards card makes it so hard to get a seat using your miles. Thats their game. The flights you want are blacked out. Or they ask for some ridiculous number of miles. Honestly, its time to switch
to the venture card from capital one. With venture, use your miles on any airline, any flight, any time. No blackout dates. And with every purchase, youll earn unlimited double miles. From now on, no ones taking your seat away. Whats in your wallet . From now on, no ones taking your seat away. Denturthan real teeth. Erent theyre about ten times softer and have surface pores where bacteria can multiply. Polident kills 99. 99 of odorcausing bacteria and helps dissolve stains. For a cleaner, fresher, brighter denture everyday. Hillary and bill clinton are heading to iowa as i said but the former president was back at the white house today. He joined up with president obama to mark the 20th anniversary of the start of americorps. The National Service program started back in 1994 when clinton was president and since then 900,000 americans have volunteered their service here at home. And well be right back after this. Its not even funny. Oh my gosh. Driver 1 you ready . Yeah go [sfx] roaring altima engine woah ahhhha we told people they were riding nissans most advanced altima race car. We lied. About the race car part. Altima, with 270 horsepower and active understeer control. How did you . What i dont even, im speechless. Innovation that excites. So i can reach ally bank 24 7, but there are24 7branches . Its just im a little reluctant to try new things. Whats wrong with trying new things . Feel that in your muscles . Yeah. I do. Try a new way to bank, where no branches equals great rates. This is the second dedication and there will be others by other president s. I think that we can perhaps meditate on those americans, 10,000 years from now, i think we can wonder whether our descendants because i think theyll still be here, what they will think about us and let us hope that at least they will give us the benefit of the doubt. Were back. That was, of course, president Franklin Roosevelt. This time at the dedication of mt. Rushmore in 1996. Part of a new documentary the roosevelts by ken burns. Beginning sunday at 8 00 p. M. On pbs, 8 00 p. M. Eastern the roosevelts sevennight event telling the interwoven story of three remarkable figures of same
family, theodore, eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt. The opening begins with a bold prediction of the young fdr made himself when he was first starting his career as a legal clerk on wall street. The junior clerks were idly talking about their dreams for the future. Most hoped just to become partners one day. But one had far bigger dreams. He didnt plan to practice law for long, he said. He intended to go into politics and eventually become president of the united states. The speaker was just 25 years old, an undistinguished student and indifferent lawyer but no one laughed. His name after all was Franklin Roosevelt. His fifth cousin Theodore Roosevelt was already president. The youngest in history. Joining me is the filmmaker the great ken burns. I think people dont realize how enormously popular Teddy Roosevelt was in his time. He was the first media president that everybody knew and knew what he looked like and everything. I think so. He completely redefined the presidency. He was young. He was energetic. He was essentially himself even though hes got kind of harvard or certainly upper crust accent and hes got coke bottle glasses and sort of rotund. People just fell in love with him because he had so much energy. He was so driven and, of course, part of the appeal for the young, a little bit too charming, a little bit too ambitious, a little bit too thin at that moment young fifth cousin franklin is thats going to try to follow each one of the footsteps of his more famous fifth cousin and, of course it isnt really until he cant take another footstep because of infantile paralysis that franklin gains the gravitas, the empathy able to lift the country up through the depression and second world war. I like fdr more and more
every year i get older. I keep thinking about the power of the guy. Anyway, joe once said he was lying on the ground in hong kong the day after pearl hasher and listening to his speech and only could pick out every other word but heard the voice and knew in listening to fdr we would win the war. Theres a moment eight days after hes inaugurated in 33 where he gives his famous banking address, the first of the socalled fireside chats and in less than 15 minutes he describes how we got into this banking mess, what the problem was and how we were going to get out of it. And, you know, the next day people expected another run and instead people put their money back in the bank. He had that great charismatic power to make people believe that they could do anything and he could do that because he had this extraordinarily confident upbringing and even with polio, even with all the other adversity, he was able to translate that into something he. I think all the roosevelts had distance in their ice and felt
that we all do well when we all do well and strangely enough no one has ever put all three together. I think it may just be the super fish alt of he a republican and franklin is a democrat. A great down p tton abbey. Eleanor accomplished a lot in her own right and as first lady long after leaving the white house. I can remember all that. She may have played a supporting reel to her husband while president but very much her own person. Lets watch her for a second here. The roosevelt marriage was a partnership in which each played a very important part. Each admired the other. Each wanted very much the approval of the other. That was true throughout their lives together even when they were mad at each other. They lived very separate lives even when they were in the white house they were very separate lives. And she took the sort of cold
view of his fame and the kind of popularity he had she knew he was and he wasnt quite what they thought he was. The more she stood up for the antilynching law, fighting the lynching thing in the 30s, of course, thats tough for a democrat because of the coalition and she also come out and quit the d. A. Or daughters of the american ref las vegas because they wouldnt let Marian Anderson who is africanamerican sing at the Constitution Hall and stuck her neck out. Everywhere. Everywhere. Shes a miracle of the human spirit. She shouldnt have survived her orphanhood ag